Articles by S H Deshpande

T N Atre's Gaav-Gada has been justly celebrated as a Marathi language classic from the point of view of diction and style. Also, Atre must be considered the first author, after Jotirao Phule, to attempt to make the educated urbanite aware of the problems of the farmer by way of a full-length book. The core theme of Atre's book is the disastrous social and moral consequences of a medieval socio-economic system and mindset lingering on into the early decades of the 20th century. This moral degeneration, according to Atre, is the progeny of the vatan system and his book is an invocation to get rid of the vatan system and the hold of the vatan mentality induced by it and to embrace the modern economic order of the market.

THIS slim book contains two essays, 'Economic Approach to Village Community and Institutions' and 'Directions of Agrarian Change in Asia: Polarisation or Peasant Stratifiction?' Although small-sized, it packs between its covers many new and stimulating ideas and therefore deserves a more detailed look than would seem to be warranted by its physical "size.

A Delayed Critique of Theodore Schultz S H Deshpande The debate on Theodore W Schultz's theories about transformation of traditional agriculture, which appeared in the pages of EPW more than eleven years ago, did not extend to tracing the Schultzian errors to their source.

S H Deshpande Village Community Projects in India: Origin, Development and Problems, by V P Pande; Asia, 1967; pp x + 258, Rs 20.
THIS is a very useful contribution to the literature on rural development. Pande traces experiments in rural development way back to the sixties of the last century and carefully con- structs their history culminating in the in the nationwide community development programme of the present day. As he tells us in the introductory note, this is not a complete history because it has omitted to examine a number of experiments in rural development. However, this is far from being a blemish because the more significant cases have been studied and the facts relating to each have been marshalled with scrupulous care.